“Why do you not abandon Poland and return to Saxony?” she asked.
The King-Elector looked at her reproachfully.
“Is that your comfort?” he asked.
“I think that it is very good advice,” she replied, controlling herself not to speak bitterly.
Augustus, who looked tired and haggard (he was indeed more fitted to be the head of a brilliant court, the patron of arts and letters, than to confront these troublous times), flushed with rising annoyance.
“It is useless to discuss with you, Madame,” he said, “what you are too flippant to understand——”
“Oh,” interrupted Aurora, “do I not understand that I am at Varsovia in midwinter, cold and dull? That you are always ill-humored and absorbed in affairs, and that I have no company beyond Hélène who is love-sick, a parrot, and a monkey?”
Augustus rose from his seat by the great oak table.
“Very well,” he said quietly, “you had better return to Dresden, Madame. It is true that here I can give you no comfort. It is also true that I must remain—my crown, all my fortunes and perhaps my life, depend on these events.”
Aurora bit her lip in vexation at her own peevishness; she scorned fretful women, and she was moved by her lover’s gentle response.